My tendency is to want to say to the person, "Do you understand why I feel this way?" I usually do say that. And sometimes it doesn't go well. By this I mean we hit an impasse again. Not that… — Claudia Rankine Copy Share Image
I think of the described dynamics as a fluid negotiation. I don't think these specific interactions can happen to the black or brown body without the white body. And there are ways in which, if you say, "Oh, this happened… — Claudia Rankine Copy Share Image
I don't know about forgiving, but it's an "I'm still here." And it's not just because I have nowhere else to go. It's because… — Claudia Rankine Copy Share Image
So you're just moving along and suddenly you get this moment that breaks your ability to continue, and yet you continue. I wanted those… — Claudia Rankine Copy Share Image
“because white men can't police their imagination black people are dying” — Claudia Rankine Copy Share Image
Whereas if you were writing an op-ed piece or an essay, somebody would be asking, "What's your point?" With poetry you can stay in a moment for as long as you want. Poetry is about metaphor, about a thing standing in for something else. It's the thing that opens out to something else. What that something else is changes for… — Claudia Rankine Copy Share
Because white men can’t police their imaginations, black men are dying. — Claudia Rankine Copy Share Image
I asked a lot of friends and people I'd meet, "Can you tell me a story of a micro-aggression that happened to you in… — Claudia Rankine Copy Share Image
“The past is a life sentence, a blunt instrument aimed at tomorrow.” — Claudia Rankine Copy Share Image
The subject who speaks is situated in relation to the other. This privilege of the other ceases to be incomprehensible once we admit that the first fact of existence is neither being in itself nor being for itself but being for the other, in other words, that human existence is a creature. By offering a word, the subject putting himself… — Claudia Rankine Copy Share
Where is the safest place when that place / must be someplace other than in the body? — Claudia Rankine Copy Share Image
